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This entry covers puns about the beach and closely related concepts. You may also like to read the entries on water puns, fish puns, boat puns, shark puns and dolphin puns. If you’re looking for beach puns in images, scroll to the bottom of this page.

Beach puns are amongst the most popular units of word play used by casual punners. Instagram captions have presented a great opportunity for this category to thrive, and during the summer season the usage of beach-related puns is at its highest (source):

And a fun fact: If you arrived at this page via a search for beach captions for Instagram you’re amongst more than 1000 other users who also go in search of (arguably) funny beach puns like those in this entry. Beach captions with puns (and especially really bad puns) are a staple across most social media platforms though.

Beach puns are also commonly used for beach house names such as “sea la vie”, “seas the day” and “sea-esta”. A common naming technique appears to involve selecting a well known phrase which has a relaxing or inspiring theme, and finding a beach or ocean based pun involving it.

Beach Puns List

Below is list of puns for beach-related topics with associated example sentences for each. Most of these puns are terrible, which is part of their appeal, but there are many puns which are quite good thanks to their subtlety.

Sure → Shore: As in “Are you shore?” and “She shore is strong!”.

Really → Reely: As in “This is a reely good pun” and “I’m having a reely good day at the beach!”.

Imp* → Shrimp*: If a word starts with “imp”, you can usually replace it with “shrimp”, for example: shrimportant (important), shrimpossible (impossible), shrimply (imply), shrimpose (you get the idea), shrimpose, shrimport, shrimpudent, shrimpact, shrimperfect, shrimpaled, shrimpartial, shrimpart. Shrimp puns probably deserve their own entry, but until then you can use this list to help you.

Something → Somefin: As in “There’s somefin about the way he walks” and “Is that a shark, or somefin else?”.

Nothing → Nofin: As in “Nofin is better than swimming with dolphins” and “I’ve got nofin left to give!”.

Whatever → Waterever: As in “Waterever, I don’t care.” and “Do waterever you want”.

What her → Water: As in “I know water problem is.” and “Do you know water mother thinks about this?”.

What do → Water: As in “Water you think about this?”

What about → Water boat: As in “Water boat we have tofu curry for dinner tonight?” and “Water boat Ching? Does she want to come to the beach too?”

What are → Water: “Water you doing out so late tonight?” and “Water you doing tomorrow?”

What are we → Watery: As in “Watery going to do?” and “Watery doing today, friends?”

Confiscate → Conch-fish-scate: As in “I’m going to have to conchfishcate your pun licence for that one.”

Single→ Shingle: As in “Yes, I’m shingle.” and “I can’t think of a shingle beach pun.”

Celebration→ Shellebration: As in “After finishing we should have a shellebration.”

Row/Roe: “Row” as in “row your boat” and “roe” as in fish or shellfish eggs, are two words that can be inserted into many other words: roetine/rowtine (routine), rowmans/roemans (romans), rowtation/roetation (rotation), rowd/roed (rowed), rowse (rose), rowl (roll), rowp, rowmantic, rowbust, rowbot, rowgue, roest.

Guilty → Gillty: As in “Your honour, I plead not gillty” and “Gillty as charged”.

Kil* → Krill*: Kill, kilogram, killer, killing, kilowatt are all words that can be punned with “krill”. For example: “I just bought a krillogram of tofu” and “Krilling sentient creatures is often morally wrong”.

Kill → Keel: As in “We can be healthy with plants, keeling animals is not necessary.”

God → Cod: As in “There have been hundreds of cods invented throughout history” and “Cod is very cruel in the Old Testament” and “We’re lucky that cod is made up!”.

Pawn/Pwn → Prawn: This pun can be used in the gamer-culture sense: “I got prawned a pro last night”, in the chess sense “He moved his prawn to C4″, and in the pawnbroker sense: “I had to prawn all my stuff to pay for college.”

Sardonic: Sardonic means “grimly mocking or cynical”, and it sounds a bit like “sardine” (the small fish), so you might us this like: “It’s okay if you don’t like seaside puns but there’s no reason to be sardonic“. For extra cheesiness you can also use “sardinonic“, which is even closer to the word “sardine”, but is not a real word.

Feeling → Eeling: As in “I’ve got a funny eeling about this…” and “I’m eeling bad about the state of this conversation”.

Opportunity → Opportunaty: As in “We’ve got one opportunaty, let’s make it count” and “Luck is often combination of preparation and opportunaty“.

Opportunity → Op-perch-tuna-ty: As in “I’m glad I got an op-perch-tuna-ty to say this pun.”

*tun* → *tuna*: Generalising the above example, we can make a tuna pun on many words that contain “tun”: opportunaist, attunament, fortuna-teller, fortunately, tunable.

Well/Welcome → Whale/Whalecome: As in “Whalecome to our home!” and “Whale, whale, whale, what do we have here?”. Whale puns can be made with many more words like welfare (whalefare), welsh (whalesh) and wellness (whaleness). Check out the entry on whale puns for more.

Girl* → Gill*: As in “There was a strange gill sitting on the beach today.” and “Where is your gillfriend, today?”

Ill* → Gill*: If a word starts with “ill”, it can be replaced with “gill” to create a pun. Here’s a list of words to get you started: gillustrate (illustrate), gillegal (illegal), gillness (illness), gillusion (you get the idea), gillogical, gilliterate, gilluminate, gilluminati, gillusive.

Hil* → Gill*: If a word starts with “hil”, it can be replaced with “gill” to create a pun. Here’s a list of words to get you started: gill (hill), gillarious (hilarious), gillarity (hilarity), gilltop (hilltop).

Debate → Debait: As in “I don’t want to debait you.” and “We’re just having a friendly debait“.

Meant to → Manta: As in “I manta buy her a gift, but I forgot.” and “Is it manta make that sound?”. If you’re feeling brave you might also like to try “manta ray” as a replacement for “meant to say”.

Summon → Salmon: As in “He salmoned a spirit from the underworld.” and “Please salmon the duke, I have an urgent message!”.

Someone → Salmon: As in “Will salmon please help me?” and “Salmon’s at the door”.

Crea* → Cray*: Many words that begin with “crea” can be used to make shoddy crayfish puns. For example: crayture (creature), craytive (creative), crayte (create).

Crayon: The word “crayon” includes “cray” – the short version of “crayfish”, and so can be used as a pun.

Had → Haddock: A beautiful and terrible pun using the name of a North Atlantic bottom-dwelling fish. An example sentence might be: “I’ve haddock enough.”

Mack → Mackerel: The word “mack” is slang for “to flirt”. To “mack on” someone is to “hit on” them. One could make a very bad pun with the word “mackeral” (a type of fish).

Ra* → Ray*: Many words that start with “ra” can be made into puns with “ray” (short for “sting ray”). For example: rayte (rate), raynge (range), rayse (raise), rayce (race), raydio, raylway, rayn, rayl, raytio, raydiation, raynbow, raycism, raynger. Many more can be made using this list.

*ration → *raytion: If a word ends in “ration” you can almost always make a stingray pun with it. For example: operaytion, administraytion, consideraytion, generaytion, concentraytion, corporaytion, preparaytion, demonstraytion, integraytion, registraytion, separaytion. You’ll find many more examples in this list.

*rag* → *rayg*: If a word contains “rag” it can sometimes be punned on. For example: “This discussion is absolutely outraygeous!”. Other examples are: discourayge, coverayge and beverayge.

Cuddle → Cuttle: As in “Would you like a cuttle?” and “Cuttling you is nice :)”. Cuttlefish bones often wash up on beaches in some regions of the world.

*sip* → *ship*: If a word contains “sip” it can usually be replaced with “ship”. For example: gosship (gossip), dishipate (dissipate), shipping (sipping), inshipid (insipid). See the boat puns entry for more.

Purpose → Porpoise: As in “I didn’t do it on porpoise!” and “What is the porpoise of this?” See the dolphin puns entry for more.

Humanity → Humanatee: As in “If only we could have some humanatee in our treatment of sea animals” and “Have some humanatee“. Note that terrible puns can also be made of insanity (insmanatee) and profanity (profmanatee).

It’s cool → School: The collective noun for a group of fish is “school”, as in “a school of fish”. So, replacing “it’s cool” with “school” gives us puns like “School, don’t worry about it” and “Don’t worry, school, she’ll be back soon.”

Send → Sand: As in “It sands shivers down my spine!” and “Sand him over here.”

Fine/Fin./Find/Fun → Fin: The word “fin” can be used to replace many small words than have both ‘f’ and ‘n’ like “fun” and “find”. The term “fin” also a French word meaning “finish”, and so is sometimes seen at the end of old films and books.

Hell of it → Halibut: As in “Why? Just for the halibut!”. Halibut is a marine flatfish.

Obs* → Lobs*: If a word begins with “obs” a terrible lobster pun can sometimes be made by switching it with “lobs”, as in observation (lobservation, or even lobstervation), obstruction (lobstruction or even lobsterusction), obscurity (lobscurity), obsolescence (lobseolescence), obsessively (lobsessively).

Fumble/Struggle → Flounder: The word “flounder” can refer to a small, common flatfish found in coastal waters and also, as a verb, to struggling, staggering or clumsily trying to do something. Use “flounder” to replace words like fumble and struggle: “He made a good sea pun at the start, but then floundered for the rest of his speech.”

In* → Fin*: A lovely and shameful pun can be made from any word starting with “in”. Simply replace “in” with “fin”: finformation, finfluence, finvolve, finternational, finvolved, fintroduce, findeed, finvestment, finto, finclude, finteresting, fintellectual, finjury, fintend, finterview, finsurance, finstrument, … Thousand more can be made with the help of a list like this. You can also check out the entry on dolphin puns for more puns of this nature.

Simp* → Shrimp*: Words beginning with “simp” can often be made into shrimp puns by replacing the “simp” with “shrimp”: shrimple (simple), shrimplification, shrimplify, shrimplistically, shrimpleminded, shrimpleton.

Shall→ Shell: As in “Shell i compare thee to a summer’s day?” and “He who lives by the sword shell die by the sword.”

Should* → Shoald*: A “shoal” can refer to a large group of fish, or an area of shallow water, or an underwater sand bank. We can use “shoal” be used to make puns like: shoald (should), shoalder (shoulder), shoaldering.

Show l* → Shoal: This is a subtle one because it involves a word break. Whenever you use the word “show”, and the following word starts with an “L”, then you can replace “show” with “shoal” (a shoal is a large school of fish). For example: “That’s cool! You should shoal Liam.” and “She laughs when we shoal little blue flowers to her.”.

*tual* → *shoal*: As mentioned above, A “shoal” can refer to a large group of fish, or an area of shallow water, or an underwater sand bank. If a word contains “tual” it can often be replaced with “shoal” for a cute little pun: actshoal (actual), actshoality (actuality), intellectshoal (intellectual), ritshoal (ritual), spiritshoal, mutshoally, eventshoal, eventshoally, conceptshoal, conceptshoalise, virtshoal, contractshoal, factshoal, factshoally, perpetshoal, textshoal, contextshoal, perceptshoal, punctshoal, instinctshoal, actshoally, habitshoally.

*sole → *shoal: As in “The shoal of my shoe is worn down.” and “Your new gaming conshoal is cool.” and “Yeah, he’s a bit of an asshoal.”

Defin* → Dolphin: As in “We dolphinitely need more time to finish the mission.” and “What is the dolphinition of this word?” and “Please dolphine this word.” and “It’s the dolphinitive source of Nordic history.” See the dolphin puns entry for more.

Endorphines → Endolphins: As in “I love that rush of endolphins you get after a good hard swimming session.”

Mor* → Moor*: Words that begin with the “more” sound can be turned into a pun on the boat-related word, moor (meaning “to tie a boat to the shore or an anchor”): moore, moorning, moortgage, mooral, moortality, moorale, moortar, moorphine, moorgue, moorphologically.

Snap → Snapper: As in “Please snapper my neck before if my puns ever get worse than this.”

Must → Mast: As in “We mast sail towards that island!” and “We mastn’t get too confident”.

Mas* → Mast*: Sometimes a word that begins with “mas” can be made into a boat pun by a replacement of “mas” with “mast”: mastacre (massacre), mastculinity, mastonry, mastochistic, mastquerading, mastage (massage). Obviously we can also make puns when a word starts with “mast”: master, masterpiece, masterminding.

Wail → Whale: As in “Poor thing, he’s been whaling over his grandmother who recently passed.” and “A good whale can help one overcome grief”.

*pear → *peir: As in “Then all of a sudden she dissapeired!” and “After appeiring to check his watch, he quickly ran away.” and “That is a sharp speir you’ve got there”.

*able → *abubble: Words ending in “able” can be converted to terrible bubble puns by replacing it with “abubble”: reasonabubble (reasonable), availabubble (available), enabubble (enable), comfortabubble (comfortable), valuabubble (valuable), constabubble (constable), acceptabubble, capabubble, inevitabubble, vegetabubble, suitabubble, variabubble, vulnerabubble, profitabubble, acceptabubble, sylabubble, reliabubble, … Many more shameful puns like this can be made with the help a of list like this one.

Issue → Fishue: As in “That’s not the fishue here though.” and “I was fishued a sign for parking without a ticket”.

Net: “net” has two senses: “net weight” and “net income” is one sense, and “fish net” is the other sense.

Place → Plaice: “plaice” is a common North Atlantic flatfish.

Clam*: Words that begin with clam can be used as shellfish puns: clamouring, clammy, clamp, clamber, clampdown.

Boy → Buoy: As in “It’s a buoy!” and “His buoyfriend is a great person”.

Bubbly: “bubbly” has a “this water is bubbly” sense and a “he has a really bubbly personality” sense.

Specific → Pacific: As in “You need to be more pacific.” and “Are you sure you have the pacifications for this?” and “Pacifically, there are two apples and three nectarines”.

Surgeon → Sturgeon: A “sturgeon” is the name of a large fish – it sounds like “surgeon”, a medical professional.

*ways → *waves: Words than end in “ways” can be made into bad wave puns: alwaves(always), railwaves (railways), sidewaves, pathwaves, lengthwaves, doorwaves.

Title → Tidal: As in “I like it, but I’m not sure on the tidal” and “Use ‘Ms.’ as her tidal” and “The championship tidal match is tomorrow morning.”

Acquaintance → Aquaintance: As in “I don’t know her well, she’s just an aquaintance“.

Not → Naut: As in “I’m naut going to keep arguing with you”.

Naughty → Nauty: As in “There’s that nauty sailor again”.

Tied → Tide: As in “I’m tide up at the moment, can someone else help?” and “Yep, they tide the knot!”

Tidy → Tidey: As in “After the party we need to tidey the beach.”

Tad → Shad: A “shad” is a common herring-like fish which lives in the sea and breeds in rivers.

Sandwich: As in “I was eating my sandwich at the beach”.

Sanctuary → Sandctuary: As in “Dogs aren’t allowed on this beach because it’s an animal sandctuary“.

Gullible → Seagullible: As in “Kyani is so seagullible!”

Puffing → Puffin: A puffin is a seabird found near northern and arctic waters. An example sentence: “He ran along the beach, puffin his chest as he passed the ladies”.

Crazy → Cray-sea: As in “He is so craysea!” and “Enough of this crayseaness!”. Hyphen is, of course, optional.

Turn → Tern: A “tern” is a sea bird similar to a seagull, but smaller and with a forked tail.

Wish → Fish: As in “I just fish we had more time!” and “If you rub the lamp you get three fishes“.

Stark → Shark: As in “The shark contrast between his and his boyfriend’s attire was intriguing.” and “The old, shark house stood looming above us”.

About/Abode → Aboat: As in “What aboat the captain?” and “Welcome to my aboat!”

Jelly: Can be used as a pun on jellyfish and the slang term for jealous (“Oh you’re just jelly.”) and as a pun on the food item.

Hell/Haul → Hull: As in “Hull is a fiery place.” and “We’ll need a bigger truck to hull all these goods.”

Sooner → Schooner: As in “Schooner or later.” and “I’ll call her schoon“. A “schooner” is a sailing ship with two or more masts. See the boat puns entry for more.

Waded: Along with walking through water, this can mean to “read laboriously through a long piece of writing”, so a water pun could be by using it with this definition: “Wading through your last comment was difficult.” It could also just be used in place of “walk”.

Could → Cod: As in “I codn’t understand that.” and “Sorry I cod only stay for a few minutes last night”.

Bitch → Beach: As in “Those beaches don’t know me!” and “She says you were being a bit beachy“.

Combine → Combrine: As in “With our power combrinedwe should be able to defeat them.” and “It’s what you get when you combrine salt and water”. Similar puns can be made for most words ending in “bine”: turbrine (turbine), concubrine (concubine), columbrine (columbine).

Beach-Related Phrases

Common phrases, idioms and cliches which are related to the beach can be used for some subtle and witty word play. Here is a list of the beach themed phrases that we’ve found so far:

Keel over and die

To seestars

Like a fish out of water

Plenty of fish in the sea

That shore is (funny/sad/long/etc.)

Something fishy about that

The coast is clear

Bigger fish to fry

Surfing the net

Happy as a clam

One sandwich short of a picnic

Channel surfing

Devil and the deep blue sea

Don’t rock the boat

A sea change

For everything, there is a season

He’s fishing for compliments

High-tide / High water mark

Hook, line and sinker

He/She has one oar out of water

Going against the tide

Jump the shark

Lay there like a beached whale

Muddy the water

My head is swimming

My lips are sealed

Paddle your own canoe

Back to the salt mine

Blood is thicker than water

Sealed with a loving kiss

She’s not the only fish in the sea

Signed, sealed and delivered

Sink a shot (through the hoop)

Sink or swim

To sink your teeth into

A fine kettle of fish

Butter fingers

That argument doesn’t hold water

That’s water under the bridge

Take it with a grain of salt

A picture is worth a thousand words

Whatever floats your boat

Dead in the water

Distance makes the heart grow fronder

A whale of a time

Keep your head above water

Drinks like a fish

Drunk as a sailor

Drowning your sorrows

Feeling blue

An albatross around the neck

From sea to shining sea

As big as a whale

In a nutshell

Keep at bay

Last resort

Mexican wave

No man is an island

Neither fish nor foul

Out of the blue

Plain sailing

Bubble and squeak

Queer fish

Ripped me off

Rising tide

Rub salt in the wound

Sands of time

Burst your bubble

Bury your head in the sand

A drop in the ocean

Stem the tide

Surf and turf

Take a long walk off a short pier

Teeth as white as pearls

Clam up and be quiet

The net result

Throw in the towel

Trim one’s sails

Walking on sunshine

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle

Worth one’s salt

Beach-Related Words

This Punpedia entry certainly isn’t an exhaustive list of all the possible beach puns, so below is a large list of beach themed words which you can use to invent your own puns. Some of the words below are leaning towards ocean-related, rather than precisely beach-related, and some of the items in this list are phrases rather than words. Here they are:

Beach Jokes

Jokes of the exceedingly cheesy or one-liner variety usually involve some sort of pun. Here’s a list of beach-themed jokes involving word play. Tap or hover on the black rectangles to reveal the answer.

What did one tide-pool say to the other tide-pool? – Show me your mussels!

What did the beach say to the wave? – “Long tide, no sea”

What washes up on very small beaches? – Microwaves!

What did the ocean say to the beach? – Nothing, it just waved

Why was the sand wet? – Because the sea weed!

What did the shark plead in the murder case? – Not gill-ty

Why do sea-gulls fly over the sea? – Because if they flew over the bay they would be bagels!

How do oysters call their friends? – On shell phones!

What is the strongest creature in the sea? – A mussel!

Why are some fish at the bottom of the ocean? – Because they dropped out of school!

Where do crabs go to borrow money? – The prawn broker!

Why do fish swim in salt water? – Because pepper makes them sneeze!

What gets wetter the more it dries? – A towel!

What does a mermaid wear to maths lessons? – An algae-bra!

Where do little fish go every morning? – To plaice school!

What did the ocean say to the sand? – I mist you!

Where do fish sleep? – On a seabed!

What did Cinderella wear when she went swimming in the ocean? – Glass flippers!

How does the ocean say goodbye? – It waves!

What is a cetacean’s favourite TV show? – Whale of fortune!

How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh? – Tentacles

What is the best day to go to the beach? – Sunday!

Where does a ship go when it’s sick? – To the dock!

Where does a fish go to borrow money? – A loan shark!

Which fish is the most famous? – The star fish!

Why don’t oysters share their pearls? – Because they’re shellfish!

Why are fish so smart? – Because they live in schools!

Which part of a fish weighs the most? – The scales!

Which fish is the most valuable? – The goldfish!

What happens when you throw a green rock into the Red Sea? – It gets wet!

What do you get when you cross a fish and an elephant? – Swimming trunks!

Why is the sand so quiet? – Because the waves keep going “Shhhh!”

Beach Pun Images

Looking for beach puns in image or meme form? Below is a collection of beach pun pictures that we’ve managed to find. Have you found or made a good one? Post us the link in a comment at the bottom of the page 🙂

Beach Pun Conversations & Battles

Spontaneous pun battles and pun conversations are common on most social media platforms (Reddit and Facebook in particular), and also in SMS conversations and forum threads. Here’s a collection of screenshots of conversations involving beach puns:

Did this Punpedia entry help you?

Whether you were looking for a punny beach caption, a really good beach pun to out-wit your friends in a pun battle or a cute beach pun for your beach shack or pet fish’s name, we really hope this entry in Punpedia has been helpful to you. If you’ve got any suggestions for puns that we’ve missed, Punpedia entries that you want us to write, or just general suggestions for how Punpedia can be improved, please feel free to leave us a comment below! Thanks 🙂